Actu
Mike Spykerman, OPSWAT: Hackers Hit 100 Banks in ’Unprecedented’ $1 Billion Cyber Attack
February 2015 by Mike Spykerman, Vice President of Product Management at OPSWAT
One of the largest pieces of cyber security news broke over the weekend when Kaspersky Labs reported that a multinational gang of cybercriminals infiltrated more than 100 banks across 30 countries and made off with up to one billion dollars over a period of roughly two years. See below for a comment from Mike Spykerman, Vice President of Product Management at OPSWAT.
"This is yet another hacking originating from spear phishing attacks: According to the Kaspersky report, the hackers were able to gain access to the banking systems by sending out emails to banking employees with a malware laced Word attachment, which when opened, executed a backdoor for the attackers. The problem with these attacks is that because they are targeted to only a small number of individuals, the malware can get past anti-virus engines. However it seems that not many companies are aware that there is an effective method to protect against unknown, advanced threats in email attachments; Data sanitization is where files are converted to a different format in order to remove any embedded threats. If the affected banks had made use of this technology, the Word files could have been converted to for instance pdf files, removing the exploit that the attackers had placed in the Word file."
